Most college ranking systems (U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review, etc.) focus solely on academic criteria or intangible surveys that critics claim (and rightly so) provide a skewed result.These lists provide a more well-rounded view.They rank 126 colleges and universities in approximately 30 different areas that are organized into 4 separate categories (Academics, Athletics, Quality of Life and Tuition and Costs), which are then averaged together to produce overall rankings.Although the best overall average is held by Princeton, students who are more interested in Athletics should take a close look at Kenyon College in Ohio. Quality of Life?Try Williams College or the University of Notre Dame.

The data is set forth on linked pages for each of the 4 major categories, and then averaged for an overall ranking.For example, the top five schools based on SATs are:

Note that these rankings do not necessarily list the schools with the most or highest in any given category.There are 126 schools represented and they were chosen somewhat arbitrarily, although an effort was made to ensure that the schools with the best numbers in any given sub-category were included (for example, the school with the fourth most NCAA championships in the country? Abilene Christian University with 53).

They are then recompiled to provide a Weighted Average, which skews the numbers in favor of schools that score well in the Academics area (they are, after all, schools), a Median and an Overall Average, which is what produces the University of North Carolina as the number two school in the country.